Fondant

Easter is a time for the iconic Cadbury Creme Egg. However, it doesn’t come in a lot of flavor variations. So it’s understandable that someone else wants to get into the cream egg marketplace.

I found these Minion Milk Chocolate with Banana Cream Egg at Cost Plus World Market. It was hard to find out who actually makes them, because it’s not Cadbury. The foil wrapper was hard to read, but eventually I was able to flatten it out to see that it’s made by a company called Treat Street, that mostly makes licensed novelty treats.

It’s a great idea, to make a cream egg with a different flavored filling, and in this case it’s brilliant that they’ve picked banana and partnered that with a Minion themed foil wrapping. They’re quite arresting when viewed in the full bin. But the most notable part of this design is that all of the eggs are Stuart, as they all have one eye (I suppose they could also be other one-eyed Minions, but it’d be silly to pay a licensing fee to make candies with a minor character).

My issue with only one design is minor, because the foil itself is quite adorable. The egg inside is completely ordinary looking. It’s the same as a Cadbury egg, except it’s missing a starburst.

The banana center is very yellow, in fact, one might call it Minion Yellow. Before biting the egg just smells like milky chocolate. After biting, well, it’s all banana. The filling is gooey, a little bit thinner than the Cadbury variety and a little less grainy. It is absolutely sweet and has a strong artificial banana flavor, though it’s also a little on the green side. Some banana flavors can have a lot of acetone notes, this one at least seems a little bit more unripe.

The most disappointing part of the egg construction is that there is not one cream compartment in the center. In the case of these knock off eggs, they’re obviously made in halves which actually have a full coating of chocolate that creates a chocolate septum when biting into the whole egg. This means more chocolate and less filling. It also means that there’s no “yolk”. Though the filling is extremely sweet and quite strongly flavored, there’s so much chocolate to balance it.

As far as a knock-off egg, this one is very good. The chocolate is passably good for a novelty item and the filling is distinctive. Since it adds its own twist with the banana as well as the foil design to go with the Minion character, I’d call it a win. However, I can’t imagine ever buying this unless I was specifically looking for a banana Easter item or something for a Minion fan. The price of $1.49 was a bit steep as well for the quality level.

Brach’s has a few new versions of their classic Candy Corn this year, in addition to the return of Apple Pie, Pumpkin Pie and Caramel Macchiatto. The Brach’s Sea Salt Chocolate Candy Corn says it’s made with real honey and comes from the same factory in Mexico that makes all the other Brach’s candy corn.

The image on the front of the bag shows what looks like chocolate truffles coated with far more salt than anyone should be eating. The good news is that it’s just an artistic representation, it’s there’s not that much salt on them and certainly none that’s visible.

Brach’s classic candy corn has 70 mg of sodium per serving of 19 pieces. The Sea Salt Chocolate version has 95 mg of sodium. The ingredients label lists both regular salt and sea salt as ingredients. The sea salt, which is the defining feature that the product leads with is way down at the end of the list after the first salt, after the palm kernel oil, after the natural and artificial colors and some extra dextrose. The only items lower on the list are gelatin, honey and the artificial colors plus sesame oil and soy lecithin.

So, back to that picture on the front of the bag, it took me a little while of eating the pieces in layers to realize that the picture is actually a code for the candy.

The base layer is sweet, though a little less sweet than a standard candy corn fondant. There’s a light cocoa note, like that feeling that you get when you go into the kitchen and realize that someone left a package of hot cocoa mix open. The next layer, the middle one, is pretty much the same, expect I think I caught some fake butter notes. Then the white top layer is not that “bland white tip of the candy corn flavor”, instead it’s actually salty. There are actually little crunchy bits of salt in there.

The whole thing tastes every so slightly less sweet than standard orange and yellow candy corn, but not actually chocolatey. It’s missing the honey notes and the weird butter flavoring really didn’t belong at all.

Of the recent novelty flavors, I think the Caramel Macchiatto was my favorite, but I’d love them to try an espresso or maybe affogato. This one seemed a little too late for the trend and not well executed.

Brach’s has introduced over a dozen flavors of Candy Corn in the past five years. There are the more traditional flavors like Harvest Corn and Pastel Corn, but also some more trendy flavors like Carrot Cake, Caramel Macchiato and Red Velvet.

Though I find myself a purist when it comes to certain candies, I think that the fondant candies are ripe for this sort of flavor exploration. I also think a lot more could be done with shape. I’m not sure why we’re hung up on the layered corn. Perhaps it’s just economical to use the same mold for all new variations and use color to distinguish them. So, I welcome these new Candy Corn shaped flavor experiences.

Last spring Ferrara Candy announced the new Brach’s Peanut Butter Cup Candy Corn and I was immediately intrigued. It’s a great idea, peanut butter cups are already layered and the flavors might translate well. Might.

The pieces look like a lot of other Brach’s candy corn pieces. They’re large and narrow and have a little notch that goes across the bottom layer and the middle of the center layer. The layers appear to be distinctive flavors, the base is cocoa, the center beige is peanut and the top is “white.”

The candy corn has an odd but convincing peanut aroma. It smells more like boiled peanuts than roasted peanuts, there’s a thinness about the scent that becomes more obvious when I ate them.

The ingredients list no peanuts or peanut butter. The only thing close is some sesame oil. There is cocoa in the ingredients list, in fact it’s the third item after sugar and corn syrup. I guess the peanuts are all in the natural and artificial flavors. I actually assumed they used defatted peanut powder in this, but sadly no.

The peanut layer is bland and has an artificial butter note to it and a sort of diluted peanut flavor, kind of like a cheap frosting. The cocoa base is decent and at least isn’t as sweet as the other layers.

I didn’t despise the Peanut Butter Cup Candy Corn, but I didn’t find it as good as I thought it could be. It’s still munchable, just not terribly distinctive. Throw it in with some popcorn or nuts for a snack, and it becomes more than passable.

I’ve reviewed quite a few mint patties here on Candy Blog over the years. It’s a good candy category and allows for a different variations in size, ratios and fondant/filling styles as well as ingredients.

Today I have the Seely Dark Chocolate Mint Patties which are made by hand with Fair Trade certified 70% chocolate and locally harvested mint.

I first tried some Seely products at the Fancy Food Show last month. The family run farm grows peppermint and spearmint in Oregon. They sell both packaged dried mint for tea and a few confectionery specialties made with their mint oils.

The patties are made by hand. It’s a curious little process, because they’re made like a sandwich, one side at a time. So the bottom is created by creating a puddle of dark chocolate and allowing it to set, then it’s flipped over and a mint cream center is deposited on top of it, then another layer of dark chocolate. Like an Oreo that has a flat unmarked inside and an embossed outside, this pattie has the swirls of the chocolate on both sides.

The box holds only 5 patties, which are one ounce each and packaged in an ordinary thick cellophane sleeve. They’re expensive, the box was $7.99, so each pattie works out to about $1.60 each.

The dark chocolate is creamy and well tempered, it has a good snap but no real flavor of its own in combination with the peppermint center. The cream center is made from confectioners sugar (which contains corn starch), tapioca syrup and egg whites along with their own peppermint oil for flavor.

The center has a wonderful melt. It’s smooth and creamy, not dry but not moist or sticky like a York Peppermint Pattie. The pattie is mostly filling, only the thinnest of chocolate on either side. It’s not an overwhelming mint, but it is quite sweet. Though the chocolate is bittersweet, it could be just a little thicker or a little less sweet on its own. Otherwise, this is a true peppermint pattie.

The patties contain egg whites and soy. There are no other allergen statements on the list.

The other item I tried, but don’t have a photo for, are their Ivory Mint Melts. I’ve been curious about these, conceptually, for a long time. The Ivory Mint Melts are just little white chocolate disks flavored with box peppermint and spearmint. Peppermint and white chocolate is quite common, but the use of spearmint is pretty rare. Spearmint is easy to grow, and the most common mint found at the grocery store in the produce aisle. But when it comes to confectionery, nearly everything mint is going to be peppermint. The Ivory Mint Melts are a combination of white chocolate, made with real cocoa butter, and both peppermint and spearmint flavors.

The white chocolate has its own milky flavor, so it’s an interesting combination because its not a blank canvas. The melt is quite good, very smooth and with an immediate hit of the spearmint notes. It’s peppery and has a grassy note to it, then there’s the peppermint in the background. It’s really refreshing but took some getting used to as it is just so unusual. I would definitely buy these, though they’re expensive and I’d prefer to find them in a store instead of paying both the high price (it’s artisan) and the shipping.

Brach’s Red Velvet Candy Corn is one of the newest in Brach’s wide-ranging attempt to create a Candy Corn for every flavor under the sun. Many of their flavors are inspired by desserts, like Apple Pie and Carrot Cake ... it’s not surprising that they went for Red Velvet Cake, and certainly appropriate for a Valentine’s-themed candy.

It’s no secret if you’ve been reading Candy Blog that I think Red Velvet as a flavor is stupid. So, you can guess where this review is going to end up, if you’re not the kind of person who scrolls to the bottom to see the rating before reading.

For those who are blissfully unaware, Red Velvet Cake is a yellow cake made with a touch of cocoa (classically with some vinegar to bring out the red) and buttermilk and then topped with ermine icing or the easier-to-make cream cheese frosting. So the flavor has become it’s a not-quite-chocolate cake with some cream cheese. For the most part the appeal of the cake is the stunning visual appeal of the layers of velvety dark red (usually enhanced with colorings) and the creamy white frosting. Sadly, most people experience it as a cupcake.

Since Red Velvet Cake is a layered item, making a Candy Corn variety is actually kind of logical. The layers, however, make no sense. It’s like they took the ingredients and used those, instead of an assembled cake. The base is dark brown, and like Red Velvet Cake, it’s not actually chocolatey, simply less sweet. The middle layer is just red food coloring in otherwise unflavored fondant. So, for me, it’s bitter. The top is white, and has a more crumbly texture and even less flavor. There’s a general vanilla note, especially when I smelled the candy in the bag.

One of the things I like about classic candy corn is the honey note and the light hint of salt. There’s 70 mg of sodium in each serving (19 pieces) but I didn’t really get any pleasure from it.

They’re fine, but not as good as regular candy corn, and not inventive enough to make me either loathe it or love it.

If you’d like other thoughts on Red Velvet, listen in as Episode 7 of Candyology101 covers Valentine’s Day candy ... and Maria and I get to rant about our pet peeves.

Chocolate covered cherries are a broad confectionery art form. They vary quite a bit, from syrupy cordials to sticky fondant. Most contain a whole cherry, though even that varies depending on the maker’s wishes.

See’s Candy sells both a milk and dark chocolate cherry. You can’t buy them online, they’re available only in the stores, as far as I know, as they don’t travel well. (Though I recall seeing them in a foil-wrapped version before in the past.)

They’re big, quite big. I positioned one of the Trader Joe’s Liqueur cherries next to it as a comparison. The Trader Joe’s are about 12 grams and the See’s varied between 26 grams and 29 grams.

The See’s version is mostly a soft fondant, with a small reservoir of syrup. See’s calls them simply Milk Cherry and describes them as, A plump, dipping cherry surrounded by a liquefied soft center covered in milk chocolate.

The milk chocolate is very nice, I enjoy the custom blend that Guittard makes for See’s, it’s milky and has a light toffee note to it. The creamy melt goes well with just about everything, including the first bite of a soft fondant. The fondant has a cherry cough syrup note to it and a strong vanilla flavor. The best part was the truly large cherry at the center ... it as so big that I feared that it still had its pit and I bit into it quite gingerly. The pink coloring is pretty awful, but I take it as a traditional aspect of this candy.

The Dark Cherry was supposed to be less sweet, but since mine weighed more (about 2 grams), I figure they just made the sugary center even larger. It’s simply too much for me. The fondant is a wonderful texture, but it, too, tastes like bubble gum. Bubble gum is nice, but really not as a chocolate item.

Since I’ve had quite a few of these in the past few weeks, I can say that I don’t think I like the fondant, I prefer the liquid or syrup centers. But if you’re a fondant fan, this was exceptionally smooth and imbued with quite a bit of flavor. In the future though, I’ll pass.

New this year for the holidays is Brach’s Candy Cane Candy Corn. I’ve never seen a product that uses the word candy so much in its name.

Now, there’s nothing new about Christmas-themed candy corn, Reindeer Corn has been around at least since 1997, probably longer though perhaps by a different name. What I was intrigued by when I saw this on the shelf was that it’s called Candy Cane Candy Corn. Though the package doesn’t actually describe what’s inside, I was left to hope that it was peppermint flavored until I read the ingredients which list peppermint oil.

It was expensive, for candy corn, at $2.99 for the bag, but it is 15 ounces, which is just shy of a pound ... and more candy corn than I actually needed.

The pieces are actually different from Reindeer Corn, the current Jelly Belly version features a red base, green middle and white tip. These have a red base, white middle and green tip. Honestly, if I was making this, I’d make them in two colors only - red base with white tip and white base with red tip ... the effect of the randomized pieces would be much more candy-cane-ish than the inclusion of green.

The red base, however, uses Red #40 to color it. Which I don’t like. Which disappoints me.

In the package the candies smell pleasantly minty, but not overwhelming.

The pieces are beautifully formed and very nicely made. There were very few broken or incomplete pieces. I always like how Brach’s balances the slender look of their candy corn with a tender bite. They’re soft but not crumbly or sticky.

The mint flavor is like the fondant filling of a peppermint patty. So basically, if you like peppermint patties without the chocolate (and maybe a little food coloring) then you’ll find these refreshing. I compared the minty flavor to the center of a Pearson’s Peppermint Pattie (because that’s what I had sitting around in inventory) and found that the fondant inside the patty is a little fluffier, but otherwise has the same smooth texture and mint density.

I think this is a great idea. It’s a great little after dinner mint that looks great in a bowl but isn’t chalky or messy or too sensitive to heat. I’m shocked that I’m not only giving these a positive review, but going further to recommend them. Often I end a review by “wanting” something else out of the product, like a different flavor version, but this is good the way it is.

You might wonder why my Halloween review is of Bridge Mix. It’s because it’s actually the scariest candy on the market today. Every maker has a different set of what they include in their mix, and because everything is coated in chocolate, it’s a game of Russian Roulette if you’re a picky eater.

If I were to rank candies according to age demographics, most results would land where I expected. Super sour candies are targeted to tweens, dark chocolate to adult women and sweet and savory candies to men who love sports. And the sales data pretty much bears that out. Then there’s Bridge Mix. First of all, Bridge Mix doesn’t seem to have any sort of marketing campaign associated with it. But if you were to find out how old the average buyer is, I’m going to guess somewhere around 73.

I picked up the Brach’s Bridge Mix because the package made it look appealing and compared to some of the other chocolate bag offerings lately, it seemed like a good value. The package is vague, but it mentions that it’s a mix of all natural milk and dark chocolate. However, there was no listing on the back of the package as to what the actual items inside would be. The front just showed the coated pieces ... the ingredients were so long, all I could say for sure is that I could expect raisins, peanuts, sugar and Brazil nuts inside the chocolate.

My first impression upon opening the bag was good. It’s a resealable bag that holds a 8.7 ounces which makes for a full cereal bowl of candy. The pieces look good, they’re shiny and for the most part distinctive. I thought I could tell which were peanuts and raisins, though the larger spheres were a mystery.

The ingredients listed Brazil nuts and the picture on the front shows a piece that really looks like a chocolate covered Brazil nut. No such item appears in the bag. Maybe my mix was missing the Brazil nuts ... it was certainly not sufficiently randomized for my tastes.

Though it’s all natural chocolate, there are a lot of not-so-natural items in there, too. There’s also gelatin, which was hard to find on the list if you’re vegetarian.

Cherry Jelly Ball covered in Dark Chocolate were one of two that I could reliably pick out of the mix. It’s a big, very strongly cherry flavored jelly ball covered in dark chocolate. I was hoping there would be other flavors, but this was it. The jelly center is nice, dense and very floral. However, there’s a grainy sugar layer in there that messed with the texture and sweetness level. I don’t like cherry candies, but I thought this was a refreshing item to have in a mix ... and it was easy for me to avoid.

White Sugar Cream covered in Dark Chocolate - if you’ve ever wanted a York Peppermint Pattie without the mint flavor, this might be your candy. But the fondant in the center is hard and grainy ... so it’s not really a good texture combination at all. The dark chocolate outside is in a much larger ratio than most other mint candies, which is fine because that’s the only flavor you’re going to get out of this thing. I felt like about 1/4 of my bag was filled with these. I would bite them in half to see if it was a large peanut or something else and then toss the other half when I found it was the fondant ball.

Milk Chocolate Malted Milk Ball - I’d like to have a long and wonderful commentary here, but that photo of the one bitten in half is the only one I got in this bag. I’ve been searching for Brach’s Milk Chocolate Milk Balls for a couple of years, and found that this Bridge Mix is the only place I can find them ... and I got one lousy one. I didn’t savor it enough to be able to review it.

Dark Chocolate Covered Peanut - excellent. The peanuts have skins on them, which I enjoy. It highlighted the bitterness of the chocolate. The peanut had a light touch of salt, and though not large, they were crunchy and deeply roasted.

Milk Chocolate Covered Peanut - not as good as the dark one, the milk chocolate hides the peanut notes somehow, but after stumbling across so many of those fondant balls, I was happy to have these.

Milk Chocolate Brown Sugar Ball - I have no idea what this is. The center was not grainy, not smooth, not flavorful, not appealing. It tasted sweet, but also dusty. I just have no idea what the point was, except to fool me into thinking that I was going to get a Malted Milk Ball.

Milk Chocolate Covered Raisins - pretty good. The raisins were soft and chewy, not tough or tacky. The raisins dominated, the chocolate was sweeter than the actual dried fruit but didn’t contribute more than texture to the experience.

The one item that was easy to pick out were the little flattened bullets that came in both milk and dark chocolate.

Milk Chocolate Covered Nut Brittle - the chocolate coating isn’t as thick as the other candies, but that didn’t matter. The center of this little morsel is a nicely made, crispy nut brittle. There may be Brazil nuts in there, but definitely peanuts. It’s salty, it’s barely sweet and I’d like to just buy a bag of these.

Dark Chocolate Covered Nut Brittle - the dark chocolate version was even better, as it enhanced the roasted nut flavors.

I’ve come away with an appreciation for people who simply throw caution to the wind and pop a handful of candy pieces in their mouth. I’m not a Bridge Mix person. In fact, this bag of candy made me angry. There were good things in it, but too many horrible things. There’s no listing anywhere that I can find that says what kind of candy is even in the bag ... it’s as if Brach’s is evasive and doesn’t want to commit to what they might put in there on any given day. I ended up with a pile of half bitten candies on my desk after I determined what I did and didn’t like ... I spit out the other halves in the trash. It was, in the end, a bad value for me, since I ate so little of it, though, technically, I finished the bag.

Candyology 101 - Episode 35 - Whatchamacallit
In the latest Candyology 101 podcast, Maria and I tackled a little-celebrated candy bar, the Whatchamacallit. We’re also trying out a new format, which is a little shorter, like a handful of fun size candy bars! (more)

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All content (text and photos unless otherwise credited) is copyright 2005-2018 by Cybele May

Please do not use my photos without prior permission directly from me, they represent what I ate in preparation for these reviews and are not to be used for other purposes.